The present invention relates to a continuous churn for making sweet-cream or sour-cream butter and consisting of an initial churning cylinder that contains a beater and creates butter grain and buttermilk, a rotating second churning cylinder that is downstream of the initial cylinder and incorporates an afterchurning section, a strainer-like section for separating the butter grain from the buttermilk, and a washing section.
A churn of this type is known, for example, from German Pat. No. 3 039 807. The mixture of butter grain and buttermilk deriving from the initial churning cylinder flows in a thin sheet through the afterchurning section of the second churning cylinder and thence arrives in the separation and washing sections. The thickness of the sheet in the afterchurning section fluctuates because the mixture does not leave the initial churning cylinder uniformly. The thinness of the sheet results in a relatively short residence time in the afterchurning section, which leads in turn to low levels of butterfat recovery from the buttermilk. Furthermore, the irregular flow of product through the second churning cylinder makes the water content of the final product fluctuate, preventing optimal approximation to the permissible limits and causing an associated loss of butterfat.